The next day, Kuming waited by the gate. Unlike last time, he casually leaned against the wall exuding confidence that even his rags couldn't hide. He made a note to find some new clothing and maybe rebuild his shack when he returned.
Once a human satisfied his basic needs—food, water, and shelter—they will always want more.
He saw a few people openly and secretly observing him, but no one approached him. Among the people staring at him, Kuming recognized a few of them from the central district with their nicer clothing. 'How much do these people know?'
Kuming stroked the goddess totem hidden in his rags. He knew it was disrespectful, but he couldn't leave it at his shack. He had already hidden his supplies underground, but he wouldn't mind too much if they were stolen. He could always find more.
Losing the totem would mean losing everything he had, his strength.
He blinked and turned in a certain direction. Not long later, the first member of his group arrived. They seemed slightly more fleshed out in the literal sense compared to yesterday. Especially Feiyan. Now that Kuming looked closer, Feiyan was really delicate compared to the others, bearing a shorter height and build.
Kuming didn't dwell on it anymore and walked forward. "Ready?'
A few gulped. They looked between Kuming and Feiyan, but they still nodded. Soon, the group of twelve left the gates under the guards' gazes and people spying on them.
Along the way, Kuming discretely observed Feiyan. He could tell something had changed, but he didn't know what. If his guesses were correct, Feiyan should have received something from the totem too. 'I'll find out during this mission.'
Unlike the last time when they had to sneak around, Kuming's group confidently strode forward. They didn't have to worry about another group following them to steal their harvests either. Once, a group full of people in the same situation Kuming had once been in tried to do that, but the group they followed executed them all outside the city walls as a warning. Since then, no one dared to copy the executed's group tactics. At most, they would try to steal from people in the same situation as themselves.
"Stop," Kuming ordered, and the group heeded his command. They had just entered the wasteland for not even five minutes, but Kuming's acute senses blared in his head. After scanning the surroundings, Kuming discovered a meter-wide hole poking out of the ground. Before he had time to say anything, something shot out of it.
Kuming only had time to summon Fluttering Time and hold it defensively in front of himself before it slammed into him. The silver saber held strong, but he didn't. The force launched him a few meters into the air and onto his back.
He didn't have time to register the burning pain ravaging his backside as his eyes took in the monster. A slithering beast with a slackened jaw full of fangs leaking venom leapt toward him. Just as Kuming resigned himself to sacrifice an arm, the monster's jaws stopped mere inches from him.
To his disbelief, the monster snapped backward as if shot from a slingshot. Then, it slammed into the ground with a thundering crash.
Just as Kuming wondered what was happening, he saw Feiyan grabbing ahold of the monster's tail while gasping for breath. It seemed that Feiyan hadn’t received weapons or techniques from the blue totem but strength, pure brute strength.
The monster hissed and rattled its scales, releasing a screeching vibration that forced Feiyan and the rest of the group to clutch their ears in pain. The screeching sound soon stopped as Feiyan found himself constricted by the twenty-meter serpent.
Feiyan roared as he tried to push away the serpent's coiling body, but it was no use. In his bound state, he couldn't even exhibit a tenth of his super strength. He stopped struggling as a shadow fell over him. He looked up and released a piercing shriek.
Just as the serpent was about to swallow Feiyan whole, Kuming appeared next to them and swung his saber. The serpent monster's head collapsed onto the ground and continued hissing while its body uncoiled itself and wriggled without end.
"Thank you," Feiyan said while covering his body.
Kuming wanted to ask if he received the strength blessing from the blue totem, but a flash of flesh caught his attention. The monster's rough scales had torn parts of Feiyan's rags off, revealing his hidden features. Or rather, her.
"You're a girl?!" Kuming blurted out.
Feiyan glared. "What, don't I look like a girl?"
Kuming wanted to say no, but now that he had taken a closer look, Feiyan did have soft features that didn't fit well on a man. He had always thought Feiyan was too short and skinny but just chalked it up to starvation. Humans didn't look all that different when they only had skin atop their bones.
"You need new clothes," Kuming finally said after a moment of silence. Feiyan nodded and didn't continue to argue.
Kuming thought about handing his rags to her for now, but he still needed the rags to secure the totem. In the end, another group member offered an extra rag they had. He really wanted to ask if anyone else was a girl but stopped himself. Instead, he told the group to continue. During the journey, he couldn't help but sneak glances at Feiyan.
When the group reached the abandoned city, they didn't find another large stash like before, but they hadn’t carried everything from the jewelry shop back the first time. Luckily, it seemed no one had discovered it either. After searching around, they found some old but tough clothes. They must have been too dazzled by the canned food and generator last time to notice.
It would take another trip to bring back everything. Kuming even had the thought of staying here and never returning but thought better of it. He needed to increase the number of believers for the butterfly goddess. Most people still lived in the city and refused to leave it unless they had to.
However, it seemed that the choice would be made for him.
"What?! You're practically asking for everything, that's way more than the normal fee!" Feiyan shouted at the guard. Her voice caught the attention of the people inside and outside the gate.
The guard smirked as he eyed Feiyan up and down, "The fee changed. Unless you have the warlord's permission, you have to give up ninety percent of your findings. You don't have to, just don't enter."
Just as Feiyan was about to haggle with the guard, Kuming grabbed her shoulder and shook his head. The guard's smile widened but suddenly froze as he led his group away. The guards received a percentage of almost everything foragers paid to enter. He saw the group's bountiful harvest and knew that they didn't have any connection to the central district, so he allowed greed to consume him.
However, his plans would fall through if they chose to wait outside. He panicked and decided to lower the fee slightly, but not before resolving to teach them a lesson once they entered for defying him.
"Did you bring your totem?" Kuming asked.
Feiyan paused for a moment before reaching into her pockets and pulling out the blue totem. Kuming nodded and then looked around. "I'm not going to enter the city again. I plan to start my own."
"That's impossible," one group member shouted. He wasn't the only one, as most of the others agreed.
"Then do you want to let them bleed you dry?" Kuming asked. "If we let them take almost everything we find after every trip, what difference would it make if we find more or not? We'll die the same either way."
"But the monsters would kill us," another group member said.
Kuming wanted to slap his head. "Look at me, and look at Feiyan. We can kill any monsters that come."
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Hearing this, the group members finally remembered Kuming's and Feiyan's abnormalities. Their hearts shook as they seriously began to consider Kuming's proposal.
Kuming originally hadn’t wanted to do this, but after thinking about it, it wouldn't be a bad idea.
First, he could kill most monsters easily, and Feiyan's super strength was extremely useful for building a wall for protection.
Second, the only requirement to join was to worship the butterfly goddess. The fee to enter would only be a fraction of what the fortress city took, making it more alluring to people in the same situation he had once been in.
Third, the more people the new settlement had, the more likely new totems would appear. They could start aggressively going after the monsters.
There was actually a fourth reason. Kuming suspected that the butterfly goddess had the power to end the apocalypse. If the warlords were to learn of this matter, Kuming wasn't sure he could keep the totem. He could kill monsters, but he wasn’t confident against bullets.
For the survivors of the apocalypse, guns were an exalted weapon with no equal.
After an hour-long discussion, only seven of the group members, including Feiyan, decided to follow Kuming. The four members took their split and walked back to the city, but something shocking happened. Halfway, they lost their strength and lost weight at a visible rate. Every blessing they received from the totem disappeared, and they returned to their original state.
Feiyan and the other members secretly sighed in relief. Although they didn't have any drastic change like Kuming, the little bit of flesh they got gave them superior physiology to most humans. They were more certain than ever of their decision to follow Kuming.
Kuming and his new group returned to the jewelry shop and sealed the entrance with giant rocks Feiyan carried back. The next day, they would search for a spot to build their settlement.
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Amidst verdant plains, a gigantic monster over twenty meters stood tall. It had the upper body of a gorilla with the lower half of a goat, a porpoise's horn, and a lizard's tail. Over thirty people surrounded it, but only one engaged the colossal monster.
It was a man in his early thirties who wore what could only be described as a combination of modern and ancient clothing. He wore a white dress shirt with slacks and over that was a silver brocade robe. Despite these two contrarian articles of clothing, they seem to meld perfectly on the man.
The monster unleashed a reverberating roar and charged at the man with a fist raised. The man didn't reveal any panic and patiently waited. A silver saber with a blade as thin as an insect's wing appeared in his hand. He was Kuming.
When the monster's fist was a mere meter away, Kuming rotated his wrist, and a silver arc trailed after the saber. At first glance, nothing had changed, but a moment later, the monster's hand fell from its arm. It roared in pain and stumbled while cradling its limb. All the while, blood bled from its new stump.
"Hmpf, just a mere beast. How dare you attack Timeless City?" Kuming asked. "Forget it. What am I arguing with a beast for?"
Kuming swung Fluttering Time thrice, and sword crescents shot out with each strike. The sword crescents cleaved through the monster and separated it into multiple pieces.
"As expected of the grand priest," a balding man with gray hair said. He glared at the ten or so youngsters behind him. "See that, that is what you should aspire to."
"But Teacher, Grand Priest Kuming was blessed by Goddess Shitian, one of the three incarnations of the Grandmaster of Heaven. How can I reach the same height when I've only been blessed by a third-class god?" a young woman asked.
"At least a third-class god blessed you, I was only blessed by a fifth-class god," a man said with envy. "Aside from Grand Priest Kuming, the highest blessings anyone received are only from third-class gods."
Their teacher snorted. "A spiritualist's strength isn't only determined by the gods they received their blessing from. What about Head Priestess Feiyan? She was blessed by a third-ranked goddess, but Grand Priest Kuming said that she is no weaker than him."
Kuming ignored their gossip and ordered them to return to Timeless City. It had been fifty years since he and his group of eight founded their own city. They suffered many hardships and setbacks, but they succeeded and found the greatest city in the current world. No, calling it a city would be incorrect because their influence was not limited to one city but tens of cities.
He had founded a theocracy.
Currently, Kuming was simply showing off to ignite the new generation's fervor. Yes, showing off. If he had really wanted to kill the monster, he wouldn’t have needed to bring out Fluttering Time.
After returning to Timeless City, Kuming made his way to the core of the city, the Pure God Temple. It was a simple yet grand structure with over thirty-three floors. The greatest structure built since the apocalypse began seventy years ago.
To be more precise, the apocalypse technically ended thirty years ago. With Timeless City at the center, vegetation began to reappear, restoring the wastelands. The monsters didn't disappear, but they were no longer as insurmountable as before.
Many humans had shed tears of happiness upon discovery and migrated to Timeless City, or any other city headed by the clerics. However, the warlords were not happy. Although the apocalypse ended, they would lose whatever power and influence they had if they joined Timeless City.
So, they started an invasion, hoping to take the power of the gods and goddesses for themselves. The result was naturally their unilateral defeat. With the warlords defeated or dead, Timeless City became the only power in the world.
Kuming entered Pure God Temple, and the first thing he saw was Bestowment Square. It was a massive ritual space on the first and largest floor. Attached to the wall of Bestowment Square was the Divine Deity Shrine. Like the Pure God Temple, the shrine had thirty-three levels.
Each level had a limited number of tablets correlating to a specific god. The higher the ranking, the more powerful the god. Every citizen would come to Pure God Temple once they reached the right age and pray to the tablets. If they succeeded, they would be blessed and become spiritualists. Even if they didn't choose to become a priest, their future would still be limitless. Sadly, most people only received blessings from unranked gods. In the pantheon, they could only be considered the lowest foot soldiers.
The third level had twenty-one tablets, but only five were inscribed. Among them was the tablet for the Heavenly Maiden of Nine Skies, the goddess of war and longevity who blessed Feiyan. On the second level, there were nine tablets, but none of them correlated to any of the gods.
Finally, on the first level were three tablets, and among the three, only one had a name inscribed onto it. It was Shitian, the goddess that blessed Kuming. However, there was actually an additional level with only one tablet inscribed with the name of the Grandmaster of Heaven.
Kuming only glanced at the Divine Deity Shrine before disappearing. With his current strength, no one in the world would be able to find him if he didn't want to be found. Silently, he arrived at the top floor of Pure God Palace.
The thirty-third floor was the smallest floor of Pure God Palace and housed a shrine. Like the Divine Deity Shrine, the shrine on the thirty-third square had thirty-three levels. Unlike the shrine on the first floor, totems were placed on them, not tablets. The tablets were actually just a conduit for the totems on the thirty-third floor to bless the citizens of the theocracy.
Kuming lit an incense and stuck it in the offering burner before kowtowing nine times. As he worshiped the totems, a faint golden glow covered him.
In the theocracy, every citizen was required to become a believer in the enshrined gods. And now, a new generation of citizens has been born. With the increase of believers, the benefit Kuming received was immense. Although progress had slowed, he could still feel his strength continually growing.
It was like an addiction, one that he willingly fell into. All the other spiritualists envied him because he was the first and most powerful spiritualist. The benefits he reaped were immense.
The public said that Feiyan's strength could equal his despite only being blessed by a third-ranked goddess. They didn't know that Kuming deliberately concealed his strength out of prudence and affection for Feiyan. In addition, he was already seventy years old, but at this rate, he could live for five hundred years. Who didn't want to live forever?
While Kuming prayed, he didn't know a world-changing event was happening underneath the Pure God Palace.
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In a sealed space beneath Pure God Palace, Shitian opened her eyes. "Finally."
After giving her blessing to Kuming, she used him as bait to see if any other immortals or gods were present in this world, but it turned out she worried for nothing. Aside from her, the broken world was devoid of any higher powers.
After confirming this fact, Shitian tried to find the Way of Heaven of this broken world but couldn't find a single trace. However, after spending time searching, she realized the problem.
Due to its fragmented state, the world was constantly losing energy and being eroded by the chaotic energy. Hence the Way of Heaven restricted vegetation and animals from being born in order to conserve energy. There was just one problem.
Humans.
As sapient beings, they couldn't be easily controlled by the Way of Heaven, so the Way of Heaven created monsters to eliminate humans, the biggest waster of resources. However, there was a flip side. As the only remaining sapient life of the broken world, their will could influence the world and even the Way of Heaven.
By creating a religion around her, Shitian gained a certain amount of authority over the broken world. She was patiently waiting, waiting for her authority to increase to a certain point, and now, she had accomplished her goal.
Shitian's figure disappeared and reappeared in a special location that reminded her of the core of the Great Desolation Lingbao entered when he became a Saint of Heaven. Unlike the Great Desolation's core, the strings representing laws that governed this broken world were in pieces, broken.
Not only that, but it was only a fraction of the Great Desolation's core. Shitian could discern that the core of the broken world was around the same level as the Great Desolation in its heyday. Her eyes scanned the space before lighting up in delight. "Found you."